Observations from UVM's Field Naturalists and Ecological Planners

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I spent the afternoon sorting a tangle of dead bodies. Their legs were all snarled in a heap. I had to pry each little corpse apart, delicately, one at a time. Down the barrel of my microscope the petri dish was filled with yellow stripes and cellophane wings, stray heads and dispossessed parts. How lovely, I thought, to see nature up close.

Then in the middle of the pile, underneath the furry abdomen of a bee, a set of small black legs began to wiggle. These insects had been stewing for two weeks, ever since I had swept them up in my net from the late-summer goldenrod and dumped their squirming bodies into a calm bath of ethanol. They should have been very much dead.

But the legs kept wiggling. Pushing the bee aside, a small wasp head emerged, yellow-painted with large black eyes, quivering. The tiny wasp crawled up on the pile of bodies like a shipwrecked sailor on a sandy shore. I shook the dish to knock it back under.

“Savage! What gives you the right to kill?” the small wasp yelled when it surfaced again. Continue reading →

My third-floor office is a commanding venue for a nap. Reclined in a worn swivel chair with my unsheathed feet stacked on the heat grates, I slip into my best unproductive hours. When my eyes deign to open, the scenery is ripe for a Chamber of Commerce brochure. The golden chapel domes and brown brick mortar of the university sit regal and prim before the white speckled ribs of New York and the glass pool of Champlain. It’s plain lovely. Especially on biting cold mornings, near 10:00, when some change of guard ushers students out from every academic pore to wade the gray salty paths to their next nook. It’s one vain pleasure up in my aerie, watching without sympathy the cold scholars scurry. Continue reading →